Columns

Sinking fast – our hopes for marine reserves

It seems extraordinary that when Britain decided to set up a network of marine
protected areas around its coasts, people did not take a long, hard look at
what had worked well on land. Think of the great national parks, some
created more than a century ago: the Kruger in South Africa, the Serengeti,
Yellowstone, Yosemite — or even our own national parks, such as the Peak
District, the Lake District and the Cairngorms.

All of these have something that stirs the imagination of every visitor,
whether it is scenery full of wildlife or the sense of living with nature in
a Wordsworthian way. Although there has sometimes been shoddy treatment of
the human inhabitants — the native American tribes evicted from Yellowstone,
for example — nobody could doubt that the communities around and about have
benefited from the parks’ creation.